I have spent further time with the Oppo and can report the following:

1. On Bluray discs the lossless tracks are relatively easy to distinguish from the lossy tracks. This is less to the Oppo than the fundamental gains you get from the lossless tracks me thinks. I'm not suggesting the differences are dramtic, but they are pretty clear, particularly on music in the soundtracks.

2. I am not loving DVD-A on the Oppo. Perhaps I have some settings amiss I will have to go back and actually read the manual. For now, I find DVD-A playback from my 800 clearly superior (as it should be). Incidentally, I am getting the same 'soft popping' sounds with multi-channel DVD-A as I do with multi-channel SACDs. This can be solved in the short-term by either unplugging the HDMI cable or just turning on a downstream device like a scaler or display. No doubt Oppo will solve this with a firmware upgrade.

3. I'm not sure that I'm not starting to prefer CD a bit more clearly on my 800. It just seems to have a level of ease and smoothness that the Oppo doesn't match. My bias tends to be 'a spinner is a spinner' so this is interesting.

Playing wuth these machines over the next few months is going to be fun.

My Kit: 861v8+ID41, 800v4, UHD722, MD600, MS600, MS200, Oppo BDP-203, Genesis 201, Genesis 350 SE, Genesis S4-8 Sub, BG 520i, VTL MB450 II, Krell Showcase 7, Genesis 928 Subs, Danley DTS10 sub, SVS Ultra 16 subs.